Your most challenging work here on Fiverr

[cyaxrex]

Ok, at the moment my brain feels like it has been put through a mincer. Over the past few days, I have had to write 45 articles about basement waterproofing. Essentially, in fact, I’ve had to write the exact same article 45 times but in a way in which it will pass Copyscape each time.

Now I find myself sat here hoping that the person who ordered this won’t order again as I’m not sure my sanity can take it. First, you see, there was a batch of 30 articles which the person who ordered them accepted with a cheery “thanks, hopefully, we’ll have some more interesting work next time!”

My response: “Fire away!” - Thinking, of course, that by ‘interesting’ my buyer meant that they would be sending me work regarding something other than basement waterproofing.

Alas no. Apparently my buyer thought I handled the subject really well and so ordered a further 15 articles regarding the exact same topic.

This isn’t a rant, though. Rather I thought it would be interesting to know what the most challenging work other people have been tasked with here on Fiverr.

In this case, please don’t post about dodgy buyers or buyers who lack the ability to communicate their brief. Rather, what has really tasked you intellectually to date? how did you manage? And do you think you learned anything from the experience?

[zeus777]

Oh darn, I was going to write a post about this buyer whom I had to message 52 times
(yes, I actually counted) back and forth in order to clearly understand his idea due to his
lack of English skills but it seems like that doesn’t qualify…

Maybe this one might be a good one:
I think it was about 2 years ago or so, I had a person (I think he was from the states) contacting me asking for a logo, and he wanted it to have a Japanese taste to it.
Being a Japanese and familiar with the traditional art style and owning dozens of kimonos,
I thought it would be pretty easy to come up with one. Based on his requests, I came up with a few rough sketches and sent them.

He replied saying “they don’t look Japanese enough” and also gave me his idea of what he thinks would make the design better.
His ideas/requests themselves were not a problem, but at least from a Japanese’s point
of view, those extra design elements did not look Japanese at all.

Still I was quite determined to get the design to work, so I took his ideas and placed
them into the logo, and came up several more versions.
At this point I also asked my other Japanese illustration/designer friends to check
if the designs looked Japanese enough, and I got their approval.

The buyer’s response?
“Getting closer, but is still lacking the Japanese taste, and it needs more color.”

I was quite tempted to let this person know that his ideas were not Japanese at all,
and that in fact I checked with my other Japanese designer’s friends, but I knew that
will come across as being pretty rude, so I kept quiet.

I eventually came up with a design that the buyer was pleased with.
It took a veeeeery long time, much longer than I thought since I just could not understand
what his idea of “Japanese style” was.

I was so glad when he told me I had nailed it.
The design itself I think was pretty good.
It just didn’t look…well, Japanese! 😛

[cyaxrex]

Yeah, I get a lot of people wanting SEO content for their websites and when I check the links they send me, I just know that they aren’t going to get anywhere. A lot look like early 2000’s sites with horrendous bugs and design and a lot are for business ideas which really aren’t going to take off.

That said, I always supply them with a great copy etc. I just find it funny when they ask for revisions, especially when it’s down to buyers not actually being native English speakers.

[eoinfinnegan]

My most challenging work was not actually from Fiverr but from another freelance site, however it was by far my most challenging task!
50,000 words of legal documents to be translated from Italian to English - within 60 hours!!!
It was for a translation company who were reselling it from someone else. The major upside was that they paid, between £- € conversion rates and lower fees from that site, roughly 7 times my normal rate. After 12 hours straight I was exhausted and made the near fatal mistake of checking how much I had done in that time (15,000 words). Thankfully, I had got used to the language being used and the unusual words had become more familiar so I was able to cut down on the dictionary checking etc.

Got it done within the time having slept for only a couple of hours. They even gave me a 20% tip! The certified translator who was signing off on it told me that the tip was because the work was great and that they had not needed to do much with it before sending it to the client. I can only imagine how much they had charged the client for it if they were willing to give a 20% tip just like that!
Took a couple of days off afterwards and would happily do it again for that kind of payment.